Easels have been used in industries such as, for example, art, photography, music, education, framing and the like to support and display designated items. These non-floral easels are expensive to fabricate and unsuitable for use as a floral easel.
In the floral industry, floral easels are usually constructed of wood or non-wood materials, such as, for example, steel wire. Thus, as used herein, easels that are constructed from non-wood materials are referred to as wire easels. Both wood and wire easels for use in industries such as the floral industry are usually cumbersome and difficult to ship, transport, and store in that they do not have the ability to readily fold into a position that is compact and easily manageable.
Typically, for example, at least two legs of known easels for use in industries, such as the floral industry, are in an open, fixed (erected) position making it impossible to fold the easel into a compact bundle for transportation. Often, florists attach floral arrangements to these wood or wire easels by affixing the floral arrangement to the two legs that are in the open, fixed (erect) position and transport the easels with only a third leg being collapsed. After a funeral visitation or service in the funeral home or chapel, the only collapsible leg of the easel is collapsed while the other legs remain in the open and erect position. The easel is then transported to the cemetery where the collapsible leg is again erected, usually with the legs pressed several inches into the soil for anchoring purposes. The display is used again during a grave side service or as a decoration at the grave site after the service. These easels are frequently transported to various ceremonies and discarded after the ceremony.
The transportability of conventional easels is therefore not maximized because of the bulky nature of such easels, and recyclability of conventional easels is inadequate due to their bulky nature. Further, shipping and/or freight costs currently reflect the cumbersome nature of shipping conventional easels. For example, depending on the freight zone, freight costs may range from 9 to 36 percent of the total manufacturing costs. This is because conventional easels, such as conventional collapsible wire easels for use in the floral industry, are produced in a factory and shipped to a designated location with two of the three legs fixed in the erected position with only one of the legs being collapsible. Shipping these types of easels is costly due to the large amount of space the easel requires because of its inability to fully collapse into a bundle. An easel for use in the floral industry, for example, that is fully or partially collapsible would dramatically decrease shipping costs. As an example, a fully or partially collapsible wire easel may reduce freight costs by up to 75% when compared to the freight costs of known wire easels.
Warehousing space must also be maximized to accommodate storage of such easels. For example, when arriving at a distributorship or flower shop, conventional easels require the manufacturer, distributor or florist to provide an excessive and unnecessary amount of storage space for the easel which is attributed to the inability of the easel to fully collapse. Also, the reuse of conventional collapsible easels by florists is poor or even non-existent due to the extreme difficulty of packing and transporting the easels.
Conventional wood easels are typically bulkier than wire easels and require more space even when the conventional wood easel is in a partially collapsed or fully collapsed position. Furthermore, wood is a scarce natural resource and alternative materials are more readily available for the construction of easels. Moreover, conventional wire easels are subject to warping upon continued use, especially when storing. These easels must be stored in a careful manner, avoiding exposure to certain conditions and must be disposed in a flat plane because of a tendency to conform to a non-linear plane. Conventional wood easels also suffer drawbacks because they are subject to insect infestation which requires irradiation when importing (or otherwise be subject to recall), and subject to splintering making the conventional wood easels difficult to transport in commerce as well as difficult to use and re-use. The wood of conventional wood floral easels must also be treated to provide the desired surface conditions (e.g., for sanding or painting) making the material prohibitively expensive when compared to other non-wood materials from which the easel could be constructed. Conventional wood easels also require assembly as well as articulation among the legs.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,426,813 is directed to a wire frame collapsible easel suitable for use in the floral industry. However, the easels disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,426,813 have the drawback that the supporting bracing assemblies, which brace the legs of the easel when the easel is in the open position, are not fixedly mounted to the legs of the easel. Thus, the easels disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,426,813 lack the desirable stability and durability. Moreover, the manner in which the legs of the easels disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,426,813 are joined together at their apex requires the use of a retaining member 180, typically a hook, to force the legs of the easel to stay together when in the collapsed position. This retaining member causes the wire easel to warp over time and limits the usable lifetime of easel.
It is to this end that there is a need in the industry for improved fully or partially erectable or collapsible wire easels that overcome the disadvantages and defects of known easels and that is compact, easily transportable, less expensive to ship and store, and is fully reuseable.